All Scots know how to reckon. -- Rabelais in Scotland. -- How
Donald made two pence halfpenny by going to the Lock-up. --
Difference between buying and stealing. -- Scotch Honesty. --
Last words of a Father to his Son. -- Abraham in Scotland. --
How Donald outdid Jonathan. -- Circumspection, Insinuations, and
Negations. -- Delicious Declarations of Love. -- Laconism. --
Conversation reduced to its simplest Expression. -- A, e, i, o,
u. -- A visit to Thomas Carlyle. -- The Silent Academy of
Hamadan. -- With the Author's Compliments.
All the Scotch know how to read, write, and reckon.
Especially reckon.
The following adventure happened but the other day.
A wily Caledonian, accused of having insulted a policeman, was condemned
by the Bailie of his village to pay a fine of half-a-crown, with the
alternative of six days' imprisonment.
As there are few Scots who have not half-a-crown in their pockets, you
will perhaps imagine that Friend Donald paid the money, glad to get out
of the scrape so cheaply.
Not at all: when you are born in Scotland, you do not part with your
cash without a little reflection.
So Donald reflected a moment.
Will he pay or go to jail? His heart wavers.
"I will go to jail," he exclaims, suddenly struck with a luminous idea.
Now the prison was in the chief town of his county, and it so happened
that he had a little business to arrange there, but the railway fare was
two shillings and eight pence halfpenny.
He passes the night in the lock-up, and in the morning is taken off by
train to the prison.
Once safely there, Donald pulls half-a-crown from his purse, and demands
a receipt of the governor, who has no choice but to give it him and set
him at liberty. Our hero, proud as a king at the success of his plan,
and the two pence halfpenny clear profit it has brought him, steers for
the town and arranges his business.
Rabelais was not more cunning when he hit upon his stratagem for getting
carried to Paris.
* * * * *
The Scotch themselves are fond of telling the following:
Dugald--"Did ye hear that Sandy McNab was ta'en up for stealin' a coo?"
Donald--"Hoot, toot, the stipit body! Could he no bocht it, and no paid
for 't."
This explains why the Scotch prisons are relatively empty. Donald is
often in the county court, but seldom in the police-court.
A good Scot begins the day with the following prayer:
"O Lord! grant that I may take no one in this day, and that no one may
take me in. If Thou canst grant me but one of these favours, O Lord,
grant that no one may take me in."
* * * * *
He would be a clever fellow, however, who could take in Donald.
There is no country where compacts are more faithfully kept than in
Scotland. When you have the signature of a Scotchman in your pocket, you
may make your mind easy; but, if you sign an agreement with him, you may
be certain that he runs no risk of repenting of the transaction.
He is rarely at fault in his reckoning; but if, by chance, an error
escapes him, it is not he who suffers by it.
I must hasten, however, to say that the honesty of the Scotch in England
is proverbial. I have always heard the English say they liked doing
business with Scotch firms, because they had the very qualities
desirable in a customer: straight-forwardness and solvency.
Donald's honesty is all the more admirable, because he is firmly
convinced in his heart, that he will go straight to Paradise whatever he
may do. You will confess that there is danger about a Christian who
feels sure that many things shall be forgiven him.
Perhaps his honesty may be the result of reflection, if the following
little anecdote that was told me in Scotland is any criterion:
A worthy father, feeling death at hand, sends for his son to hear his
last counsels.
"Donald," he says to him, "listen to the last words of your old father.
If you want to get on in the world, be honest. Never forget that, in all
business, honesty is the best policy. You may take my word for it, my
son,--_I hae tried baith_."
This worthy Scot deserved an epitaph in the style of that one which the
late Count Beust speaks of having seen on a tombstone at Highclere:
"Here lies Donald, who was as honest a man as it is possible to be in
this world."
* * * * *
The Jews never got a footing in Scotland: they would have starved there.
They came; but they saw ... and gave it up.
You may find one or two in Glasgow, but they are in partnership with
Scotchmen, and do not form a band apart. They do not do much local
business: they are exporters and importers.
The Aberdonians tell of a Jew who once came to their city and set up in
business; but it was not long before he packed up his traps and decamped
from that centre of Scotch 'cuteness.
"Why are you going?" they asked him. "Is it because there are no Jews in
Aberdeen?"
"Oh, no," he replied; "I am going because you are all Jews here."
An American was so ill-inspired as to try his hand there where even a
Jew had been beaten.
The good folk of Aberdeen are very proud of telling the following
anecdote, which dates from only a few months back, and was in everyone's
mouth at the time of my visit to the city of granite:
An American lecturer had signed an agreement with an Aberdonian, by
which he undertook to go and lecture in Aberdeen for a fee of twenty
pounds.
Dazzled by the success of his lectures, which were drawing full houses
in all parts of England, the American bethought himself that he might
have made better terms with Donald. Acting on this idea, he soon sent
him a telegram, running thus:
"Enormous success. Invitations numerous. Cannot do Aberdeen for less
than thirty pounds. Reply prepaid."
The Scot was not born to be taken in.
On the contrary.
Donald, armed with the treaty in his pocket, goes calmly to the
telegraph office and wires:
"All right. Come on."
Jonathan, encouraged by the success of this first venture, rubs his
hands, and, two days later, sends a second telegram, as follows:
"Invitations more and more numerous. Impossible to do Aberdeen for less
than forty pounds."
Donald thinks the thing very natural, and laughs in his sleeve. He bids
the messenger wait, and without hesitation he scribbles:
"All right. Come on."
Jonathan doubtless rubbed his hands harder than ever, and might have
been very surprised if he had been told that Donald was rubbing his too.
However, he arrived in Aberdeen radiant, gave his lecture, and at the
end was presented by Donald with a cheque for twenty pounds.
"Twenty pounds--but it is forty pounds you owe me!"
"You make a mistake," replied Donald, quietly: "here is our treaty,
signed and registered."
"But I sent you a telegram to tell you that I could not possibly come
for less than forty pounds."
"Quite so," replied Donald, unmoved.
"And you answered--'All right. Come on.'"
"That is true."
"Well then?"
"Well, my dear sir, it is all right: you have come--now, you may go."
Like the crow in La Fontaine's fable, Jonathan registered a vow ... but
a little late.
"Ah!" cried the Aberdonian who told me the story, "Jonathan will not go
back to America to tell his compatriots that he took in a Scotchman."
And his eyes gleamed with national pride as he added: "It was no harm to
try."
He considered the conduct of the American quite natural, it was clear.
As for me, I thought that "All right--come on," a magnificent example of
Scotch diplomacy and humour.
* * * * *
Donald has a still cooler head than his neighbour John Bull, and that is
saying a good deal. In business, in love even, he never loses his head.
He is circumspect. He proceeds by insinuations, still oftener by
negations, and that even in the most trifling matters. He does not
commit himself: he _doubts_, he goes as far as to _believe_; but he will
never push temerity so far as to be _perfectly sure_. Ask a Scotchman
how he is. He will never reply that he is well, but that he is _no bad
ava_.
I heard a Scotchman tell the butler to fill his guests' glasses in the
following words:
"John, if you were to fill our glasses, we wadna be the waur for 't."
Remark to a Highlander that the weather is very warm, and he will reply:
"I don't doubt but it may be; but that's your opinion."
This manner of expressing themselves in hints and negations must have
greatly sharpened the wits of the Scotch.
Here, for instance, is a delicious way of making a young girl understand
that you love her, and wish to marry her. I borrow it from Dr. Ramsay's
_Reminiscences_.
Donald proposes to Mary a little walk.
They go out, and in their ramble they pass through the churchyard.
Pointing with his finger to one of the graves, this lover says:
"My folk lie there, Mary; wad ye like to lie there?"
Mary took the grave hint, says the Doctor, and became his wife, but does
not yet _lie there_.
Much in the same vein is an anecdote that was told me in an Edinburgh
house one day at dessert:
Jamie and Janet have long loved each other, but neither has spoken word
to the other of this flame.
At last Donald one day makes up his mind to break the ice.
"Janet," he says, "it must be verra sad to lie on your death bed and hae
no ane to houd your han' in your last moments?"
"That is what I often say to mysel, Jamie. It must be a pleasant thing
to feel that a frien's han' is there to close your ee when a' is ower."
"Ay, ay, Janet; and that is what mak's me sometimes think o' marriage.
After all, we war na made to live alone."
"For my pairt, I am no thinkin' o' matrimony. But still, the thoucht of
livin' wi' a mon that I could care for is no disagreeable to me," says
Janet. "Unfortunately, I have not come across him yet."
"I believe I hae met wi' the woman I loe," responds Jamie; "but I dinna
ken whether she lo'es me."
"Why dinna ye ask her, Jamie?"
"Janet," says Jamie, without accompanying his words with the slightest
chalorous movement, "wad ye be that woman I was speakin' of?"
"If I died before you, Jamie, I wad like your han' to close my een."
The engagement was completed with a kiss to seal the compact.
* * * * *
The Scot, in his quality of a man of action, talks little; all the less,
perhaps, because he knows that he will have to give an account of every
idle word in the Last Day.
He has reduced conversation to its simplest expression. Sometimes even
he will restrain himself, much to the despair of foreigners, so far as
to only pronounce the accentuated syllable of each word. What do I say?
The syllable? He will often sound but the vowel of that syllable.
Here is a specimen of Scotch conversation, given by Dr. Ramsay:
A Scot, feeling the warp of a plaid hanging at a tailor's door,
enquires:
"Oo?" (Wool?)
_Shopkeeper_--"Ay, oo." (Yes, wool.)
_Customer_--"A' oo?" (All wool?)
_Shopkeeper_--"Ay, a' oo." (Yes, all wool.)
_Customer_--"A' ae oo?" (All one wool?)
_Shopkeeper_--"Ay, a' ae oo." (Yes, all one wool.)
These are two who will not have much to fear on the Day of
Judgment--eh?"
You may, perhaps, imagine that laconism could no further go.
But you are mistaken; I have something better still to give you.
Alfred Tennyson at one time often paid a visit to Thomas Carlyle at
Chelsea.
On one of those occasions, these two great men, having gone to Carlyle's
library to have a quiet chat together, seated themselves one on each
side of the fireplace, and lit their pipes.
And there for two hours they sat, plunged in profound meditation, the
silence being unbroken save for the little dry regular sound that the
lips of the smokers made as they sent puffs of smoke soaring to the
ceiling. Not one single word broke the silence.
After two hours of this strange converse between two great souls that
understood each other without speech, Tennyson rose to take leave of his
host. Carlyle went with him to the door, and then, grasping his hand,
uttered these words:
"Eh, Alfred, we've had a grand nicht! Come back again soon."
If Thomas Carlyle had lived at Hamadan, he would have been worthy to
fill the first seat in the Silent Academy, the chief statute of which
was, as you may remember, worded thus:
"The Academicians must think much, write little, and speak as seldom as
possible."
* * * * *
Another Scot very worthy of a place in the Silent Academy was the late
Christopher North.
A professor of the Edinburgh University, having asked him for the hand
of his daughter Jane, Christopher North fixed a small ticket to Miss
Jane's chest, and announced his decision by thus presenting the young
lady to the professor, who read with glad eyes:
"With the Author's compliments."